Sweet Vinndication (Portland, Part 1)

Hey hey everyone and welcome to another edition of Mastication Monologues! I’m finally back from my four day long adventure to the Pacific Northwest, specifically Portland, Oregon, and I have plenty of food adventures for y’all to read about. However, I am going to switch up the style of my writing for this travelogue and instead just focus on one restaurant in each post. Let me know if you prefer it like this, one post for one restaurant, or a recounting of each day with multiple restaurants.

While I arrived in Portland on Wednesday evening, I wasn’t feeling up to grabbing a very late lunch due to general fatigue and the wonderful Portland weather that greeted me, i.e. an annoying misty rain coming down at random intervals. However, the next morning I suited up and was ready for my first day of my international teaching convention. While externally I seemed raring to go, I remembered that I needed to get the fuel to get my teaching mind firing on all cylinders. So, I remembered a breakfast place I passed while walking to a nearby Walgreens that was called Village Inn. It seemed like a local place based on its location away from the heart of the downtown along with its general appearance as a greasy spoon diner. I made a mental note of it and returned that Thursday morning. It was another dreary gray and drizzly day, but my formal attire seemed to catch the staff off guard as I entered, valise in hand. It looked like the average age in the place was 60, but I didn’t mind how empty it was at 8 a.m. As I surveyed the menu, it seemed that this was a chain of sorts that smacked of the larger Denny’s corporation in regard to the general interior decor and menu boasting breakfast, lunch, and dinner entrees at all hours. Plus, it brought the Baker Square vibe with their pie obsession. Very Important Notes: If you buy a dish on Wednesdays, you get a free slice of pie. Plus, they offer 69 cent beverages everyday of the week from 6 am to 9 am, and kids eat free on Monday and Tuesday. What’s not to like about this place? After looking at the plethora of eggs, pancakes, My Very.Innportant.Breakfast option, and heart healthy plates, I went for the strawberry banana supreme French toast for $9.69. French toast is my weakness when it comes to the first meal of the day, and I can’t say no to fresh fruit.

When it eventually came out, I was surprised that it looked somewhat similar to the picture that advertised it in the menu except with more strawberry sauce to make it look like the set from Carrie.

C’est si bon!

Thankfully, the taste was the opposite of horrifying, and I didn’t feel like killing everyone who humiliated me by making me eat their terrible food. The strawberries and bananas were actually fresh and not canned which I really savored. I felt like there could have been a bit more powdered sugar, but the slices of French toast by themselves were divine. Not only did I taste the subtle hints of vanilla in the batter with every bite, but the bread to cream ratio favored the former which I prefer. Too much cream takes away from the flavor of the actual toast along with destroying any sort of texture contrast in the dish. Overall, I was greatly satisfied with the food, service, and prices. Plus, if you need to be somewhere in a hurry, they don’t mess around with your order which I appreciated. So if you’re looking for a new breakfast restaurant that you’d like to try out for the first time or just need that coffee and pancake panacea to cure the hangover from last night, Village Inn is the place for you!

About Mark T

I'm a food lover who would like to share my many adventures throughout the culinary and geographical world. A good meal or snack can unite people from all walks of life, and new stories can be created from meetings around a table or face to face in a quiet cafe. In this blog, I will share various experiences I've had over the years, and hopefully you'll adventure outside your usual gastronomic choices to try something new and unusual. Bon Appetit, Buen Provecho, and Buon Appetito!